Gainesville's Interfaith Alliance for Immigrant Justice

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Tuesday, October 7, 2014

The Fair Food Campaign with Publix Begins Again

A delegation from Gainesville Interfaith Alliance for Interfaith Justice, ACTION Network, Emmanuel Mennonite Church, Gainesville Friends Meeting, and Westminster Presbyterian Church visited the management at the Westgate Publix store at University Avenue and SW 34th Street at noon on Tuesday, October 7 to request a meeting to discuss our concerns. The manager promised to forward our letter to corporate headquarters, but declined our invitation for a personal conversation.

Friday, July 18, 2014

Unaccompanied Children on the Border

A Plea for Local Action
The United Methodist Church proposed an interfaith weekend of prayer July 18-20 for the children and teenagers who have come across the border seeking asylum from violence at home.

Will you invite your church, mosque or synagogue to share in prayer for a just solution to this problem, one that protects these youngsters from violence and exploitation?

Here in Gainesville we can target next weekend July 25-27 giving us more time to reach out to local faith communities.

We can do it, but only with your help.

This weekend a large number of local protests are being held by anti-immigrant groups. None of them north of Orlando.

Let's combine an interfaith weekend of prayer next weekend (July 25-27) with a public service in behalf of these children. Sunday afternoon July 27?

Join Bishop Carcaño in Praying and Acting to Protect Unaccompanied Children

As the President and Congress try to deport the immigrant children let's ensure their rights are protected!Your church can pray for the protection of the children this weekend, July 18-20. The undocumented minors who have travelled hundreds of miles to escape the violence in their home countries need your prayers and support! The California-Pacific Conference has created some really valuable resources. Join us in prayer and action!

You and your church can — no SHOULD — call your members of Congress and urge them NOT to repeal the provisions in the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA). This bill was unanimously agreed to by ALLmembers of Congress. It would not return vulnerable migrants to danger and it would reduce the likelihood that the U.S. would deport children back into the hands of traffickers and others who would exploit them. Proposed changes to the TVPRA mean that children would not have a meaningful opportunity to have their story heard, apply for asylum, or be cared for humanely by child-welfare personnel. The children would be deported to potentially life-threatening situations. Congress should NOT rescind this bipartisan law at precisely the time when more children are in need of these protections.

Call 1-888-427-0530and ask for both your Senators and your Representative and say,

Lastly, come to Washington, .DC., on Thursday, July 31, to tell the President to stop ALL deportations! Over 2 million deportations and now the President and Congress want to repeal provisions in an existing law — the TVPRA — so they can deport more! For years we have been hearing that what is needed is to simply "enforce the law." Now, we have a law in place that protects vulnerable migrants, and sadly there is agreement by both Democrats and Republicans to repeal it! This shows us that immigration policy in the United States has very little to do with reasonable policy. Rather, it is rooted in isolationism, protectionism, and detachment: all of which are antithetical to our call as Christians to love and provide hospitality for the most vulnerable.

I urge you to let me know ASAPif you can join people of faith from all over to sacrificially engage in civil disobedience in front of the White House on July 31 and urge President Obama to stop ALL deportations, whether the person is 5 years old or 105.Let's stop the repression.In Christ,Bill MeffordDirector, Civil and Human Rights

Sunday, June 22, 2014

New post on Mennonite Church
USA

Richard MacMaster, speaking here at a rally, is chair of
the Southeast Mennonite Conference Task Force on Farmworker Justice. He is a
retired history professor and a member of Emmanuel Mennonite Church,
Gainesville, Florida.

The
men, women and children who harvest the vegetables and fruits we eat are
invisible to most Americans. We Mennonites may be familiar with migrant farm
workers, but how many of us have heard their stories and know what life is
really like for them?

For
our congregation, Emmanuel Mennonite Church in Gainesville, Florida, a Sunday
morning sharing time with workers from the tomato fields of Immokalee in 2009
was an eye opener. We learned about difficult working conditions, the
impossible number of huge buckets of tomatoes needed to earn close to minimum
wage, the prevalence of sexual harassment, and what farm workers themselves are
doing to change this.

We
invited the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to bring their Modern-Day Slavery
Museum to our new meeting house. When they came, our local newspaper was
running stories about an unscrupulous Haitian labor contractor who recruited
laborers in Haiti. These laborers agreed to pay him large sums for a legal job
in Florida. They then worked eighteen months on a farm a few miles from
Gainesville while the contractor pocketed their wages to pay the debt. We
learned that this kind of servitude is commonplace in Florida.

Farm
workers found allies in churches and on campuses. In 2010 Kimberly Hunter asked
Eve MacMaster, her pastor at Emmanuel Mennonite, to help organize the churches
of Gainesville. Kimberly drew up a statement for the initial meeting, showing
that the call for justice was a Biblical imperative rooted in the prophets and
the words of Jesus.

Berea
Mennonite Church (Atlanta, Ga.) had a similar experience hosting the Immokalee
workers when they came to Metro Atlanta. Pastor John Wierwille and his
congregation reached out to other Atlanta churches and to our own conference to
enlist their support for farm workers.

Fast
forward to 2014. In January the Leadership Board of Southeast Mennonite
Conference created a Task Force on Farm Worker Justice. We on the task force
are committed to helping congregations Southeast Conference and Mennonite Church
USA connect with farm workers and support their efforts to improve their living
and working conditions. We expect to soon have curriculum and study group
resources. We hope to bring our concerns to the conference assembly this year
and to Kansas City next summer.

Meanwhile,
if you would like to bring a speaker to your church or want more information
about the Fair Food Campaign, contact Claire Comiskey atClaire@interfaithact.org. To learn
more about our Task Force or our community efforts e-mail me at gainesvilleiaij@gmail.com

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

The next 34 days are critical in our collective efforts to end the 34,000 immigrant detention quota. Sign-up today to get involved during the 34 Days to End The Quota.

During the month of June, the House of Representatives will be voting on the Fiscal Year 2015 appropriations bill, which includes the detention bed quota. In the meantime, 34,000 immigrants continue to be locked-up at any given time in detention and thousands of families and communities continue to be torn apart. Now is the time to ADVOCATE, EDUCATE and ORGANIZE to #EndTheQuota.

From watching and sharing the End The Quota video, and signing-up to host an event or action in your community, to calling and meeting with your members of Congress, we need all hands on deck! Now is the time to act and stop the arbitrary quota that keeps thousands of immigrants behind jail walls.

Here are 6 things you can do to End The Quota:

1Join DWN's End The Quota webinar, this Thursday, June 12th at 2:00 p.m. EDT. Register here.

3Call and/or visit your members of Congress and ask them to eliminate the immigration detention bed quota from the FY 2015 appropriations bill. Ask your Representative to vote for the Deutch-Foster amendment that strikes the quota language from the bill.For advocacy materials go here.

Governor Scott Signs Tuition Bill

Passage of the bill to allow children of undocument immigrants who otherwise qualify to pay in-state tuition was achieved by the hard work of many Florida undividuals and groups over several years. It was the first issue that Interfaith Alliance for Immigrant Justice worked in 2010 as part of our DREAM Act campaign.